


How Sweet It Is

by ariya167



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Happy Ending, Kataang Week 2018, Romance, Slow Burn, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 05:51:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15551061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariya167/pseuds/ariya167
Summary: Katara has never felt anything from her soulmate. Not the pain of a scraped knee or a stubbed toe, or any minor bruises or cuts, nothing.~until a boy in an iceberg wakes up into an unfamiliar world.





	How Sweet It Is

Katara has never felt anything from her soulmate. Not the pain of a scraped knee or a stubbed toe, or any minor bruises or cuts, nothing. Sokka used to tease her about it, before he realized what it meant.

It makes her sad, to know that whoever her soulmate is, they’re probably not alive anymore. It hurts the most when the Fire Nation invades their village, and she runs to get Dad, but he collapses suddenly in the snow. She’s old enough to know what that means, even before he tells her. Mom is gone, and she’s never coming back. 

She’s fiercely glad that she’ll never have a soulmate-she’ll never give herself up to one person and hurt herself in the process. 

 

“Will you go penguin sledding with me?” The boy asks cheerfully, and Katara jerks back in surprise. 

“Uh, sure, I guess,” She says, confused. He stands up, but it’s more like floating than moving. There’s something strange about him, maybe his clothes. He’s dressed in thin orange and yellow, odd for the South Pole, but he doesn’t seem to be cold. And he’s bald, with a blue arrow tattoo curving over the back of his head. 

“What’s going on?” He asks, and Sokka pokes his spear at him. 

“You tell us!” He threatens. “How did you get in the ice? And why aren’t you frozen?” 

Katara just rolls her eyes. Whoever the boy is, he clearly isn’t a threat to them, or the Southern Water Tribe. 

 

Katara’s looking at a statue of the Avatar before Aang when her chest starts to ache with a terrible sadness. She gasps, and when the statue’s eyes start to glow, she realizes what’s happening. 

“Aang!” Katara cries, and runs out of the room. Outside in the temple, winds are raging, and she turns a corner to see Aang rising into the air, his eyes and tattoos glowing. Sokka is lying in rubble, holding a hand protectively over his face, and she hurries over to him. “What happened?”

“He found out firebenders killed Gyatso!” Sokka shouts back, then looks oddly at her. “Are you crying?”

Katara shakes her head, though now that she realizes it, tears are falling down her cheeks. She feels hollow with grief and rage-like she felt when her mother died. “It’s his Avatar Spirit,” She says to Sokka. “He must have triggered it. I’m going to try and calm him down!”  
She raises a hand to shield herself from the wind and dust, and Sokka shouts after her.

“Well come on, do it! Before he blows us off the mountain!” 

The storm is almost too strong, but she manages to fight through it to Aang. He’s starting to rise, but he’s still low enough for her to grab him and pull him close to her. 

“Aang!” Katara says. “I know you’re upset, and I know how hard it is to lose the people you love. I went through the same thing when I lost my mom. Monk Gyatso and the other airbenders may be gone, but you still have a family.”

Sokka runs up to her, and grabs Aang’s other side. 

“Sokka and I, we’re your family now!” She continues, and Aang falls down into their arms, the storm finally fading. 

“Katara and I aren’t going to let anything happen to you. Promise.” Sokka says gently, and only then does the awful pain in her heart ease as the glow of Aang’s tattoos and eyes fades. 

 

Katara waits until Sokka has fallen asleep, and it’s just her and Aang sitting by the dying embers of the fire.

“Aang,” She says, and hesitates. Does she really want to bring this up now, when he is still so fragile? Even if she couldn’t feel his grief as painfully as her own, it’s evident on his face. “At the Southern Air Temple . . .”

She trails off when Aang looks back at her. 

“I don’t know what happened,” He says, and his face crumples in pain. “I just felt so sad, and so angry.”

“I know,” Katara says, and summons her courage. “I know . . . because I felt what you were feeling.”

His eyes widen in shock. Ever since she was a child, Katara knew the fundamental truth of soulmates-you’d always be able to feel your soulmate’s pain, whether it was physical or emotional. Aang must’ve been taught the same thing a hundred years ago. 

“And I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but . . .” She finishes helplessly. 

“Could we . . . could we test it out?” He says shyly.

“Okay, uh, close your eyes. No peeking!” She adds, and Aang turns away from her, his eyes squeezed shut. Katara digs in her bag, and grabs the knife she uses for eating. She doesn’t cut herself with the blade, but instead digs the handle into her palm for ten seconds.

When she turns back, Aang says, “I felt this sort of pressure in my palm, I think.”

“Are we . . . are we soulmates, then?” Katara says cautiously. The words are so strange, so unfamiliar to a girl who thought she’d never find her own soulmate. 

“I think so,” Aang says, and hurriedly adds: “But soulmates don’t have to be romantic or anything! We’re just friends, and we don’t have to be anything more. Right?”

“Right,” Katara agrees, and pushes dirt over the ashes of the fire. “Goodnight!”

“Goodnight,” Aang says cheerfully, and they turn away to slide into their sleeping bags. 

Katara should feel relieved about their conversation, but her stomach is hollow with . . . disappointment? She shakes off the feeling, and forces herself into sleep.

 

A small flame bursts into life in Aang’s hand, and Katara grins at him. 

“I did it! I made fire!” He exclaims, but Katara’s smile fades when she sees how big it’s growing. 

“Aang, that’s great, but . . . shouldn’t you take it slow?” 

He doesn’t seem to hear her, and starts tossing the flame back and forth between his hands. “Now that’s some firebending!” He says triumphantly, and Katara takes a small step back.

“Aang, you’ll hurt yourself.” She says, concerned. Fire is dangerous, and who knows what will happen if he loses control?

“I wonder how that juggler did it,” He wonders, and tosses his arms out. She stumbles back, but the edge of the flame catches on her hands. She cries out, cradling her hands close to her.

It burns, like nothing else, and Sokka rushes to her side from the forest. 

“Katara, I’m so sorry!” Aang shouts, his face pale with pain. In her haze, she remembers he must be feeling the same agony. 

She looks up at him through her tears, while Sokka shouts at him, and she thinks, briefly, cruelly, how her own soulmate could hurt her like this. It’s unfair, but she can’t help it. 

“You burned my sister!” Sokka yells, and though Katara knows that it isn’t Aang’s fault, she wonders if she’d have ever felt like this if she’d never had a soulmate in the first place. 

 

Katara doesn’t meet Aang’s eyes when he hops on Appa’s saddle, until she notices a burn on his arm. 

“You’re burned!” She says, pulling the fabric on his arm back. “Let me help.” 

Katara pulls the water from the pouch on her hip, and lets the water settle over his wound before it starts to glow. 

“Wow, that’s good water,” He says tentatively, but she looks away. Her anger has simmered and cooled, but she’s still mad. 

“I’ll leave you to it,” Sokka says, shooting Aang a suspicious look before heading up the saddle to give them some space.

“I’m sorry, Katara,” Aang says sincerely, and it almost breaks her heart. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I know,” She says, staring down at her hands. The burns have healed, but she can still feel them on her hands. “The thing is . . . when I was a kid, I thought I didn’t have a soulmate. And when my mom died, I thought maybe it’d be better that way. Because I’d never have anyone to hurt me like that.”

For a while, she doesn’t say anything, and neither does Aang. Then: “I’ve never wanted to hurt you, Katara. And I promise you, I’ll never hurt you again.”

She hugs him wordlessly, and thinks, this feels right. 

“You guys are soulmates?” Sokka says incredulously, and she punches him in the shoulder.

“Eavesdropper!” She accuses, and Aang laughs, and everything feels almost normal again. 

 

Yue’s hand slips out of Sokka’s, and she rests her palms on the white koi fish. Impossibly, it starts to glow-like Aang when he’s in the Avatar State, Katara thinks. But then Yue crumples into Sokka’s arms, and he lets out a cry of pain. 

“No! She’s gone, she’s gone.” He’s holding her tightly, when she . . . just disappears. Katara startles, but then the oasis starts to glow, and Yue appears in the light.

“Goodbye, Sokka,” She murmurs, floating closer to him. “I’ll always be with you.”  
Katara turns away as they kiss, and looks up at the moon in time to see it reappear in the sky. That awful red light is gone, and she can feel her waterbending surge up at her command. 

But Yue is gone, and she knows a part of Sokka is too. He’s still staring at the place where she was, his face lined with grief. 

“Sokka?” She says tentatively, joining him on the banks of the oasis.

“She’s gone,” He says, and when he looks at her, his blue eyes are glassy with tears. “She’s gone, and I couldn’t save her.”

Katara doesn’t say anything. She isn’t sure there even is anything to say. But she sits with him until the sun comes up, and Aang stumbles back, dizzy and disoriented, but bone-dry. And when it’s time to leave the North Pole, he takes her aside and whispers, “Thank you, Katara.”

 

She can’t help it-when the earth turns to liquid around her and she sinks waist-deep into the rock, she screams. 

“I can’t move!” Katara says, and Aang hurries towards her.

“Don’t hurt her!” He cries, but she only sinks lower. 

“Katara! No!” Sokka shouts from atop his ostrich horse, running towards her, but Fong flings rock at him before he can come any closer. 

“Stop this!” Aang begs, grabbing Fong’s arm. “You have to let her go!”

“You could save her if you were in the Avatar State!” He says smugly, but Aang only shakes his head.

“I’m trying!”

Suddenly, she sinks lower. The rock is tight around her chest and she can barely breathe. “Aang, I’m sinking!”

“I don’t see glowing!” Fong demands, and the earth buries her up to her neck.

“Please!” She says, and Aang falls to his knees in front of Fong.

“You don’t need to do this!” He says, and Fong laughs scornfully.

“Apparently, I do.” 

Katara cries out again, before she’s completely buried. Her breaths are coming short, but there’s still air-at least, for now. She can’t hear anything, though-if Aang’s in the Avatar State, the only clue she has is the phantom ache of rage in her chest. 

Suddenly, she’s flung up to the surface again, though she’s still trapped. A storm as fierce as the one at the Southern Air Temple is raging, and Aang is at the center of it. 

Please, Aang. Don’t do this, she thinks, while Fong is still shouting.

“It was just a trick to trigger the Avatar State!” He says triumphantly. “And it worked!”

Aang turns to face Fong, his face twisted in anger. He lands on the ground, when Katara sees a flash of something . . . blue? before the glow fades and he collapses to the ground. 

Fong twists his wrist, and she’s free. Katara runs over to Aang and envelopes him in a tight hug.

“I’m sorry, Katara,” He says regretfully. “I hope you never have to see me like that again.”

The pain fades, and she can breathe easy again. She buries her head in Aang’s shoulder, and lets herself cry in relief that he’s safe. 

 

“What’s going on with you?” Katara asks Sokka after the fifth time he’s rushed ahead of Suki to make sure her path is clear, or that she won’t step in a puddle or something.

“Nothing!” He says defensively, glaring at her. “Okay, maybe I’ve been acting a little-”

“Crazy?” 

“Worried. But it’s only because I care about her! I don’t want Suki to get hurt.” Like Yue, he doesn’t have to say. 

“Sokka, if you keep this up, she’ll be the one hurting you.” She rests a hand on his shoulder. “Look, I know you want to keep her safe. But you need to let her live her life, too.”

“I know,” Sokka says, and although Katara can tell there’s more to it than this, she doesn’t push. Whatever it is, he can tell her when he’s ready. And thankfully, after they talk, Sokka’s freakouts go from every thirty seconds to every ten minutes, which she knows Suki is grateful for as well. 

 

Katara finds Aang outside while Ying and Than care for their new baby. 

“I thought I was trying to be strong.” He says, his back still turned. “But really, I was just running away from my feelings. Seeing this family together, so full of happiness and love-it’s reminded me how I feel about Appa . . . and I how I feel about you.”

Wordlessly, she embraces him, tears falling down her cheeks. 

“I’m proud of you, Aang,” Katara says, and she really means it. She knows how much losing Appa hurt him, and she knows how hard it is to stop bottling up what you feel and start letting it out. “And I’ll stand by you, no matter what.”

Aang smiles at her. “Thank you, Katara. I promise, I’ll find Appa as fast as I can. I just need to do this.”

He unfolds his glider with a snap of his wrist, and flies up into the air. She stays and watches his receding form for a long time. 

 

“I thought you had changed!” Katara shouts, flinging her water whips back at Zuko. Infuriatingly, her eyes burn with tears. Had what she said meant nothing to him? Had he been playing her all along, like some sick joke?

“I have changed.” He shoots back, and she wants to scream at him. She should never have trusted him, never should have thought he could rise above his nation’s cruelty. 

She knocks his firebending away easily, until she jerks in surprise when the crystals explode behind her. She turns for a fraction of a second to see Azula, dressed in Earth Kingdom green, stride out of the smoke. 

She gulps, but regains her determination to throw a wave of water against Azula. She blocks it, and it’s back to trading blows until she’s knocked off her feet. 

Her braid is undone and her hair is in her face as she tries to stand again, until suddenly she’s surrounded by Dai Li agents. But she’s not giving up without a fight, and she pulls a water octopus up from the wet marble below her feet to defend herself. 

A bright glow in the corner of her eye distracts her, and she turns to see Aang rising out of a crystal shelter, glowing not with rage or pain but with serenity. She smiles without thinking, to see how strong and powerful he is, but still completely in control.

That is, until Azula’s lightning strikes Aang in the back. Her scream of pain echoes his as they fall, that sharp agony buried in her spine. His wound hurts like nothing has before, like a deep, profound torment. 

She can barely move, but she manages to wrap her water into a wave and surge above the Dai Li agents to Aang.   
He’s just lying there-lifeless, she thinks, and shudders from the wrongness of it. Clumsily, she grabs him in both hands, tries to prop him up next to her as she pulls the waterfall into a spout to propel them out of the catacombs. 

On Appa, she pulls open her vial of spirit water-at least she didn’t use it on Zuko-with shaky hands, and presses it’s glow to the gash on Aang’s back. Only when it sinks into his skin and the throbbing of her spine fades does she allow herself to hold him tight and cry as they leave the fallen city of Ba Sing Se. 

 

The tray falls from Katara’s hands and crashes to the floor, but she barely hears it. He’s gone. 

“Oh, no,” She says, before she runs from the room and up to the ship’s deck. Dad is there talking to Bato, but when he sees the tears on her face, he quietly excuses himself. 

“What’s wrong, Katara?” Dad asks gently.

She wants to scream or rage or cry, but she settles for saying, “He left.”

“What?”

“Aang. He just took his glider and disappeared.” Katara sniffles, feeling like a little kid again, but she can’t help it. She had felt his frustration, his guilt, but she’d never thought he’d do anything like this. “He has this ridiculous notion that he has to save the world alone, that’s it’s all his responsibility.” 

“Maybe that’s his way of being brave,” Dad says.

“It’s not brave, it’s selfish and stupid!” She shoots back, clenched fists shaking with her anger. “We could be helping him, and I know the world needs him, but doesn’t he know how much we need him, too? How can he just leave us behind?”

“You’re talking about me too, aren’t you?” 

She’s been so furious, and she doesn’t even know why-but here it is, all her failures and mistakes laid cleanly out in front of her. 

“How could you leave us, Dad?” Katara says, trying to wipe away her tears with the back of her hand. “I mean, I know we had Gran-Gran, and she loved us . . . but we were just so lost without you.”

Dad moves to hug her, but she turns away. She doesn’t want him to see her like this.

“I’m so sorry, Katara,” He says, and she squeezes her arms around him in an embrace. 

“I understand why you left. I really do, and I know that you had to go, so why do I still feel this way? I’m so sad, and angry, and hurt!” And now everything’s spilling out. She’s tried so hard to hide how she’s feeling, to put on a smile like a mask, but she can’t keep it a secret anymore. 

“I love you more than anything,” Dad says. “You and your brother are my entire world. I thought about you every day when I was gone and every night when I went to sleep, I would lie awake missing you so much it would ache.”

“I’m sorry, Dad,” Katara says, but he shakes his head fiercely. 

“Don’t ever be sorry for that, Katara. What has happened to you was wrong, and you have every right to be angry. But look at you, Katara! Fourteen years old and you’re already stronger than your dad.”

She smiles before she can help herself, and wipes the tears out of her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Now,” Dad says teasingly. “Why don’t we find that boyfriend of yours?” 

“Dad!” She protests, but she can’t help but feel like something crucial and broken has been mended, just a little bit. She’ll find Aang, and they’ll save the world, together. 

 

Katara’s body is no longer her own. Hama had reached inside her with her bloodbending and twisted her to her own use.

“Stop! Please!” She begs tearfully, but Hama only cackles madly, forcing her down to her knees. Katara can’t move, can barely breathe, but her veins still sing with the moon’s power. Surely there is something she can do, to escape before Hama kills her-or worse. 

Slowly, agonizingly, her bones crack as she frees herself from Hama’s grip and rises to her feet.

“You’re not the only one who draws power from the moon!” Katara says, sinking into a bending stance. “My bending is more powerful than yours, Hama. Your technique is useless on me!”

She draws a ring of water from the grass below her feet, and flings it at Hama, only for her to redirect it back. Katara spins it forward again, but Hama pulls more water from the trees around her to block it. 

A jet of water surges forward, but she only throws up a hand, scattering it into hundreds of tiny droplets. Hama hesitates, clearly surprised by the amount of strength she has, and there’s enough of an opening for Katara to knock her off her feet. 

Sokka and Aang emerge from the trees, and though Katara sighs in relief to see her friends, she needs to warn them. It’s not safe, not while Hama is still here.

“We know what you’ve been doing, Hama!” Sokka shouts, while Aang falls into a fighting stance.

“Give up! You’re outnumbered.”

Hama laughs cruelly as she rises from the ground. “No, you’ve outnumbered yourselves.” 

Her fingers splay out in front of her, and Sokka and Aang scream, flying at Katara. She waterbends them out of the way, and sends a water whip at Hama, but she dissipates it in a water wheel. 

Katara turns when she hears the scrape of metal, to see Sokka waving his sword and stumbling towards her.

“Katara, look out!” He shouts, and she steps back automatically. “It’s like my brain has a mind of its own! Stop it, arm; stop it!”

She pulls up a ring of water and pushes him away, turning to Aang. 

“This feels weird,” He says, and she doesn’t waste any time, using ice to freeze him to a tree.

“I’m sorry, Aang!”

“It’s okay!” 

But Sokka is still under Hama’s power, and she has his sword to worry about. She freezes him to another tree, and sighs in relief. Now she can fight Hama again without having to worry about her friends. 

“Don’t hurt your friends, Katara,” Hama says mockingly, raising her hands again. “And don’t let them hurt each other!”

Her fingers clench, and Aang and Sokka fly forward on a collision path, faster than she can blink.

“No!” Katara cries, horrified. There has to be something she can do, some way she can save them, and before she realizes it, she’s sought out the blood in Hama’s body and frozen her in place. It’s easier than she expected, the implications of which she does not want to think about, even as she slowly lowers Hama to the ground. 

Toph comes storming out of the woods, a group of people-the lost villagers, Katara thinks-behind her.

“You’re going to be locked away forever,” One of the villagers says as handcuffs are snapped around Hama’s wrists. 

“My work here is done,” She says, unconcerned, and turns to Katara. “Congratulations, Katara. You’re a bloodbender.”

Katara hides her face in her hands as she wept. She had vowed not to use bloodbending, to never use it, but she had, and it had been so, so easy. 

Sokka puts his hand on her shoulder as Aang envelopes her in a hug, but all she can do is cry. 

“It’s okay,” Sokka says gently. “We know you did what you had to.”

“But even if I never use it again,” She sniffles, and pauses before saying: “I’ll always have the option to. I’ll always have to stop myself from taking the easy way out.”

“Katara, you know what the difference between you and Hama is?” Aang asks, and after a moment, she shakes her head. “Hama used her powers to hurt people, but you used yours to stop her. And maybe you’ll always have to make sure not to use bloodbending again, but you’re the strongest person I know. No one can make you do anything you don’t want to.”

“Thanks,” Katara says, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. She doesn’t really believe him, doesn’t really believe that she’ll be able to stop herself from bloodbending, but right now, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that she feels just a little safer with Aang and Sokka around her, and soon the full moon will be gone and she’ll lose her new, awful sense of the water in her friends’ bodies. 

“Of course, Katara,” Aang says, and squeezes her all the more tightly. 

 

“I still can’t believe we lost,” He says, late after the failed invasion, when everyone else has drifted off to sleep. There aren’t enough tents for everyone, so they’re sharing. Katara takes Aang’s hand in hers, and turns to look at him.

“It’s not your fault,” She says, and even though he starts to protest, she continues: “None of us could have known Azula knew about the invasion plan. It’s nobody’s fault.”

“I know,” Aang says, but he doesn’t meet her eyes. “It’s just . . . this was supposed to be it. The end. Everything was supposed to work out.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that. She doesn’t think there is anything to say, but she has to try. “I get it. My dad-that was the first time I’d seen him in years. But now he’s gone again. And I’ll have to keep fighting to get him back. And we shouldn’t have to fight, but I know that we can win. That you can win.”

“Thank you,” Aang says, and they sit together in silence, staring at the dying embers of the lamp they’re using. 

“Aang,” Katara says suddenly, when something comes to her. “Before the eclipse, when you kissed me-”

“I’m sorry,” He apologizes, face lined with worry. “I shouldn’t have done it without asking you. And I know we said we’d just be friends, but I love you, Katara. I think I have for a long time. I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t-I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.” 

Wordlessly, she moves closer to him. “You don’t have to apologize. I-” She takes a deep breath and: “I think I love you, too. But-I don’t know . . . if I’m ready. For something like this.”

“Oh,” Aang says, and she can tell he’s disappointed, but at least he’s doing his best to hide it. “I understand. I . . . I don’t want you to feel like you have to say yes.”

“Thank you,” Katara smiles, a little tearily. “Goodnight, Aang.”

“Goodnight, Katara,” He says, and she extinguishes the flame, the tent they share falling into darkness. 

 

Zuko’s looking at her-she can feel it. And she’s still angry at him-even though he’d helped her, it hasn’t erased what he’s done before. She tries to look at the ocean stretching away below them, but it only reminds her of what she did to the commander on the Southern Raiders ship. She had sworn never to bloodbend again-but she was just so angry. 

That doesn’t help, but she doesn’t know how to reconcile what she did with her perception of herself. 

“We’re almost there,” Zuko says quietly, the sound of his voice almost lost in the wind. She doesn’t respond, but she nods solemnly and focuses her eyes on the horizon, where she can just see the shore of an island. The island where her mother’s killer lives. 

They find Yon Rha’s home easily-it’s on the outskirts of town and he’s just headed down to the market to get some food for his mother. Stealth comes easily to Katara-and she can tell Zuko’s already learned-and he never even notices them until he trips over their wire.

“Do you know who I am?” She asks quietly, ignoring the rain soaking through her hair and her hood to glare at him. He looks so shrunken, so afraid-nothing like the evil killer from her memory. 

“No . . . I’m not sure,” Yon Rha stammers.

“Oh, you better remember me like your life depends on it!” She shouts, stepping closer to him. “Why don’t you take a closer look?” 

“Yes, yes, I remember you now!” He says, his words lighting a fire within her heart. “You’re that little Water Tribe girl. Your mother was a waterbender.”

Memories flash unbidden in her mind-the falling snow stained black with ash, the strange man in their tent, the cold hate in his eyes. Dad collapsing to his knees, too late to save her mother.

“She lied to you,” Katara says, trying to keep her voice steady even as she shakes with anger. “She was protecting the last waterbender.”

“Who?” 

“Me!” She shouts, and seizes all the tiny droplets of rain in her grasp, pushing them further and further out until the three of them are surrounded by a dome of water. Before she knows what she’s doing, the rain shatters into shards of ice, and she flings them at Yon Rha. 

The ice never hits him. She’s not conscious of making a decision-too fast to think, not to feel-but looking at Yon Rha, small and weak on the ground, she knows she can’t kill him. She lets the water fall.

“I always wondered what kind of person could do such a thing, but now that I see you, I think I understand. There’s just nothing inside of you, nothing at all. You’re pathetic and sad and empty. But as much as I hate you . . . I just can’t do it.” Let him think about that for the rest of his life. When she leaves this island, she’ll never spare another thought for this man again. 

 

“I’m proud of you,” Aang says, sitting down beside her on the dock. Katara doesn’t answer at first, paddling the water with her feet as she stares out at the horizon. 

“I wanted to do it,” She says, still looking out at the ocean. “I wanted to take out all my anger at him, but I couldn’t. I don’t know if it’s because I was too weak to do it, or because I was strong enough not too.”

“I think you did the right thing. Even if you didn’t forgive him, facing him is the first step to start healing.” He takes her hand, and she turns to smile at him, even if it’s a little tired.

“I’m not ever going to forgive him. But I am ready to forgive Zuko.” She stands up from the boardwalk, and makes her way to where Zuko is standing awkwardly at the edge of the shore. “I’m sorry,” She says, but Zuko shakes his head.

“You shouldn’t be,” Zuko says, and tries to laugh, but she just shakes her head and envelopes him in a hug. It feels strange, but today has been very strange as well.

 

Aang is waiting on the balcony outside Iroh’s tea shop, watching the sun set over Ba Sing Se. Katara gazes at him for a moment, then heads outside. Her left knee still aches when she puts any weight on it-a byproduct of her fight with Azula-and the phantom twinges of pain echo up and down her spine from Aang’s lightning scar, but she’s happy, in a way she can’t remember being before. 

Katara smiles at Aang when she joins him on the balcony, and he smiles back, taking her hand in his. She puts her other hand on his shoulder, and envelops him in a hug. She’s never been this happy before, or felt so safe. Sure, there is much more to do-stabilize Zuko’s reign, bring the colonies back under Earth Kingdom rule, start rebuilding the Southern Water Tribe-but she sets those thoughts aside for now, and settles back into the here and now. 

Before she can talk herself out of it, she leans forward and kisses Aang. It’s been a long time coming, from friends to soulmates to something even more. He wasn’t her first love, but he is so close to her heart loving him feels more like loving a part of herself. But their kiss is warm, and gentle, and together with Aang she can just be.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always welcome!


End file.
